Sheffield Children’s launches energy promise green initiative for colleagues

Sheffield Children’s is delighted to launch a brand new Trust wide green initiative that we hope will inspire and energise people across Sheffield Children’s and The Children’s Hospital Charity.

John Williams, Director of Finance and Green Lead for Sheffield Children’s, said: “One of our key aims as a Trust is to reach carbon net zero by 2040, and there’s lots of ways we’re working to reach this; from making our buildings more energy efficient, purchasing electricity from solely renewable sources, and replacing our estate transport fleet with electric vehicles.

“To achieve such an ambitious target, we also need support from colleagues to make small changes to your day to day lives to help us drive down energy consumption, whether you’re working on site or at home. I hope you all can join in and get involved in any way you can!”

The Children’s Hospital Charity is supporting us with this campaign. John Armstrong, Chief Executive, said: “As a Charity we are committed to working with the Trust on achieving sustainability together. Our promise is to reduce the Charity’s carbon footprint with the aim of matching the Trust’s ambition to be carbon neutral by 2040. We are already taking steps to support our green initiative such as continuing to purchase our energy from a supplier that provides 100% renewable energy and utilise online platforms to reduce the number of business journeys made.

“Artfelt will source good quality, sustainable materials for their projects and buy locally; supporting the regional economy and reducing their carbon footprint where possible. When working on green spaces, Artfelt will strive to be not just sustainable, but regenerative. We have banned glitter from our Artfelt Workshops and Engagement Programme to be kinder to our rivers, and for Christmas, we hope to replace all the snowflake rope lighting with lower energy LED lights by Christmas 2024.”

What are we asking colleagues to do?

We are introducing three simple stages of an energy promise that we’d love everyone across the Trust to choose and follow as many as you can in their day to day lives, regardless of your role or place of work – all support in any way is valued.

• Bronze – this is the first promise where you will turn off lights when you are leaving the work space, keep an eye on your heating (and particularly remove electric heaters) and print less.
• Silver – this requires a bit more commitment as not only will you follow the bronze promise above, you will join our brand new Green Network on MS Teams, switch off all equipment when you finish using it and bring your own containers and reusable cups for food and drink.
• Gold – this will need the most support as you will follow the bronze and silver levels above, as well as recycle as much waste as possible and join Warp-it to recycle your furniture and equipment, use more sustainable travel wherever you can and eat less meat – for example taking part in Meat Free Mondays.

You can follow as many or as few promises as you like, depending on your working situation. For example, turning off lights when you finish working may not always be possible if you’re working in your house! In this case we would just ask that you consider turning lights off when no one is in the room.

You can find out about the other brilliant work happening across the Trust in relation to our Green Plan on our news page here.

To read the Sheffield Children’s Green Plan and the surrounding work that is happening across the Trust to be kinder to the environment now and in the future – visit our publications page here.